Mario Lubetkin | Caribbean’s role in transformation of agrifood systems

The global food security crisis reveals an increase in the undernourishment prevalence, reaching higher than in 2015, when countries first agreed to eradicate hunger by 2030 as one of the SDG targets. In the Caribbean, between 2014 and 2021, hunger increased by 2.3 percentage points, affecting 16.4 per cent of its population by 2021. Moreover, the Caribbean is a net importer of almost all the main food groups such as cereals, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables (except the Dominican Republic), meat, and vegetable oils.

This region is highly vulnerable to extreme events, climate variability, and climate change. Increasingly, extreme weather events, shifting rainfall patterns, rising temperatures, recurrent drought, and floods, among other, pose an unprecedented threat that can cause substantial socio-economic and environmental loss and damage.

The recent 44th Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), chaired by the Bahamas, highlighted some of the main challenges affecting food production in the region. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has strengthened a special focus to implement joint strategies to support the Caribbean countries’ priorities and discuss new ways for the Caribbean to transform agrifood systems.

For the first time, the FAO was invited to address this important discussion during the 17th Special Session of the CARICOM Council for Foreign and Community Relations. The FAO recognised CARICOM’s great efforts to implement the agrifood systems strategy in member states to help achieve the reduction of the Caribbean’s large food- imports bill by 25 per cent by 2025.

PRIORITY VALUE CHAINS

The organisation is supporting the development of priority value chains to contribute to reducing the region’s food-import bill. It is doing so by working with governments and key stakeholders in designing and upgrading strategies as well as good practices and opportunities for attracting investment to help boost intra-regional trade.

In this frame, the Heads of Government of CARICOM have also supported the project proposal “Building Food Security through Innovation, Resilience, Sustainability and Empowerment” presented by Guyana, and the FAO is working closely with the member states to promote a climate finance mobilisation strategy to fund innovative initiatives such as novel animal feed, optimising greenhouses, soil, and land mapping. The FAO supports governments and communities in building capacities to comprehensively manage multihazard risks to enhance the resilience of livelihoods and value chains.

It is crucial to increase and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of investments across the agrifood system. In this regard, the FAO, together with the CARICOM Private Sector Organization, agreed to pursue collaboration to enhance intra-regional trade and private-sector investment in the Caribbean to trigger agriculture sector growth.

On the other hand, the last Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, whose current pro-tempore presidency is held by St Vincent and the Grenadines, concluded with a declaration from 33 member states, which emphasises a regional commitment to guarantee food security, supporting agricultural and rural development.

This high commitment of the main government structures of the region will contribute to an effective preparation for the next FAO Regional Conference in Georgetown, Guyana, which will take place in March 2024, disclosing the importance of an effective engagement of the Caribbean in the decision-making process to transform the agrifood systems.

The successful transformation of the agrifood systems in the region will require ownership, political commitment, and action plans. It is necessary to coordinate a joint effort to reinforce technical assistance in the field and more investment and partnerships to support food security, the climate-change fight, sustainable production, and international fair commerce to protect livelihoods and small-scale producers and guarantee our food security.

Mario Lubetkin is assistant director general and regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean for Food and Agriculture Organization. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com